If you want it, come and take it.
Peter O’Mahony has had the honour of captaining Ireland 10 times in a Test career that is now into its 13th season. For the upcoming Six Nations, he has the job outright.
On Wednesday [January 17], the IRFU confirmed Andy Farrell’s squad selection for the opening rounds of the 2024 Six Nations.
The talking points, due to it being a relatively small squad of 34, were mainly around the players unfortunate, or hard done-by, to miss out. There was some chat around who will back-up presumptive No.10 Jack Crowley for the opening rounds of the championship.
Then we had Peter O’Mahony. The overall tone was positive. A common consensus was that Farrell was going hard at retaining this Six Nations title and going with a guy that was the obvious choice. The long-serving lieutenant was stepping up as captain.
There was also a section that bemoaned the appointment – that claimed O’Mahony is there just because he is centrally contracted [for now, at least] and that Farrell should be using this championship to move on. In fairness, there were two other strong candidates in Garry Ringrose and James Ryan, while Caelan Doris appears to have been placed on the captaincy fast-track.
Still, it was regrettable to see some social media harrumphing when the Cork native was bestowed an even greater honour than his one-time stint as Lions Test captain, back in 2017. Plenty grumbled about that, too. Such is the nature of sport, and fandom.
Many of the haters are forgetting the most important thing in top-level sport – it’s about the here and now.
Right now, Andy Farrell believes Peter O’Mahony is the best guy to be that on-field leader and driver from the back row. O’Mahony is 34 now but he was in some of the best form of his life in 2023. He is just back for Munster after a spell on the sidelines and showed against Toulon, last weekend, how vital he is to a team – individually and as that senior figure others row in behind.
O’Mahony is on top of the mountain. He has the high ground and he is the man in possession of that No.6 jersey. It is up to the likes of Ryan Baird, Tom Ahern (a training panellist) and Cian Prendergast to come take it from him. The training camp in Portugal will facilitate at least one full-on session for challengers to have a crack at O’Mahony, but he has seen off plenty before.
Ryan Baird, left, and Peter O’Mahony of Ireland. (Photo by Seb Daly/Sportsfile)Peter O’Mahony and torch-passing
A couple of seasons back, we spoke with Peter O’Mahony about the crop of decent youngsters breaking through at Munster – lads that are now in and around him with the Test side.
Jack Crowley and Craig Casey are squad regulars now. Calvin Nash has impressed those in the Ireland set-up, while Tom Ahern has a chance to do likewise in Portugal. Back at Munster, left to focus on Europe and the URC, you have others that are not far away from that step up – Alex Kendellen, John Hodnett, Antoine Frisch and even younger lads like Brian Gleeson, Edwin Edogbo and Paddy Campbell.
O’Mahony, as he has been for the past few seasons, has taken on the role that Paul O’Connell played for him when he was first breaking through. O’Mahony recalled, “There would have been a lot of times I would have spoken to Paulie. Even before I played for Munster [senior team], he would have been on to me about this and that. At the time, I probably didn’t realise that he was doing his shaping of me, with regard to me coming on. That stood to me.”
He was a couple if weeks shy of his 22nd birthday when he was asked to captain Munster for the first time, in September 2011. Many of the squad were over in New Zealand, at the World Cup, but the Munster XV still contained Doug Howlett, Lifeimi Mafi, Peter Stringer and Marcus Horan.
“I wouldn’t say that I was never fazed in training,” O’Mahony told us. “I was completely taken aback, in my first couple of sessions, and seasons, with Munster.
“I was training with guys that I would have had posters of, up on my wall at home, a few years previous. Then, all of a sudden, I’m in the middle of training sessions and matches with them.
“At the same time, I probably took it for granted a little bit, you know what I mean? I would have done a lot of work on it – just to feel settled, like I belonged. It felt natural, but at the same time, very unnatural. It did tell me what the thought of me. But, again, that comes back to putting pressure on yourself because, I’d be thinking, if they feel I’m capable of that, and they’re giving me this responsibility, they expect something in return. That’s the pressure you put on yourself.
“I’d be thinking – ‘I’ve got these guys around me that have won European Cups, Six Nations, they’ve captained Lions teams. These guys expect me to be one of the best today. They’re putting me in this position’. That, I feel, brought out the best in me.”
Andy Farrell will be fully aware that O’Mahony may not make it to the 2027 World Cup [he would be 38] but he is the best man for the job, right now.
If it is Dan Sheehan or Caelan Doris – even James Ryan, Garry Ringrose or Jack Crowley – Farrell has identified as a future Ireland captain, they will find no better man to learn from than O’Mahony.
Back in 2019, Matt Williams ‘thought the guy was finished’. Here we are, five years on, still waiting to be toppled.
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